willdye wrote: BenRG wrote:Art - Martin Freeman (The Office)
Kat - Marina Sirtis (Star Trek: TNG) - Largely on the basis of her 'drunk' performance in First Contact :P
Pip - Hank Azaria (The Simpsons; Mystery Men)
Scarlet - Ikue Otani (Pikachu in the Pokémon animé); Also the other Quinten Quads
Hillary - Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives)
Vanity - Kristin Kreuk (Smallville)
OzBASIC - Kevin Spacey (GERTY in Moon)
Jack - Harry Shearer (The Simpsons)
JJ the Hampster - Phillip M. Jackson
Crazy Boris et al - Harry Enfield (Loadsamoney; Stavros)
Aack -- there goes the budget! I'm
serious about proposing an animated version of SA, so that list might be good for getting ideas, but not as a list of agents to start calling. Barring a deal with a major studio there's no way we'd be able to hire an all-star cast like that, though I'm hoping that we'll be able to afford at least a couple of experienced voice actors such as Richard Horvitz. Also, while I have a lot of respect for the work of folks like Teri Hatcher and Kristen Kreuk, I'd put less emphasis on experience playing roles of similar characters, and more emphasis on experience in voice-only acting.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice list for getting ideas. Thanks for posting it. It's just that I've been thinking about how big of an audience (and hence budget) we could hope to bring in with an SA-based animated product, so seeing a top-price name like Harry Shearer made me cringe. I completely agree with asking Mr. Jackson to voice the hamster, though I'm only planning on a brief cameo appearance by the little critter as an inside joke to fans of the comic strip. I'm considering asking Ellen McLain (the voice of GlaDOS) to pick a role, though if she asks for OzBASIC I'd want clearance from Valve on the matter. Among copyright lawyers here's a fine line between "homage" and "grounds for a lawsuit", and it will cost you at least $300 an hour just to ask them to explain where that line
might be. It's cheaper to avoid the line completely by asking for permission in advance (ask Al Yankovic).
I haven't had much luck in coming up with a good voice for Scarlet, but I'm guessing that it's a problem which will solve itself. The character is so appealing that my plan is to simply collect a bunch of her best comics and letting a broad range of actresses know that the role is available to whoever sends us the best demo tape. We might even get some big-name actress to take the role if they're willing to do the job for a low up-front price. I would not, however, give all four squirrel girls to the same actress, as you suggested in your list. The other three squirrels would be consolation prizes to the actresses who didn't get Scarlet, and I'd prefer that the voices be very distinct, to help the audience know which of the four is speaking at a given time.
The biggest problem is Art. He's largely the straight man of the group, which is a much more difficult role than the over-the-top characters who more easily draw attention. The straight characters are critical. They provide contrast for the attention-drawing characters (e.g. they make a goofy character seem goofy by comparison to the straight). Perhaps more importantly, the straight often becomes the eyes of the audience -- which IMO is very much the case with Art. Art is the most subtle character, but he's the lead role, and I feel strongly that if we can't get the audience to connect with him and root for his success, then the rest of the story would largely fail. But which voice would best fit the role? I'm still stumped, but a good casting director can probably solve that problem, so I'm not too worried about it (yet).
Right now it's more important to get a marketable concept written up, create a plausible budget, try to convince JJ to get on board, and start looking for a backer. For what it's worth, so far I can't think of a good argument that this concept will have a broad enough appeal to get past the comic-store crowd (which is a good market, but too small for most animation projects). So at the moment it looks like this won't work out, but it's been fun to at least think about it for a while. I like the comic, I just wish there was a way to get an animated something-or-other (movie? tv series? animated web comic?) out of it.
